Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

The wind flowed through Yuriko’s hair as she drove her Bladedancer across the highways. She’d just left her tower but didn’t really have a destination in mind. She was currently on the same level road as the hundredth floor of a mega building, but she was looking to get to the higher roads. The ramps heading upwards needed authentication, though the ones going down didn’t. Her current registry was still at the Green Zone, but it didn’t cost that much to use the upper ways. Those paths were usually shorter and spanned the distance between mega buildings and districts as opposed to the lower roads which meandered.

Unlike other motorbike riders, Yuriko wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was stuffy, and she found that her hair usually got loose anyway. Still, she had to control how it flowed, otherwise it might get tangled in the bike’s wheels, chain, and gears. Again.

Well, the first and only time it happened etched the lesson deep in her Anima, especially since it put her bike out of commission for a couple of days and cost her twenty thou to fix. Her hair was fine. It was tougher than metal.

The skies were clear blue, with nary a sign of clouds. A pity since she wanted to hunt for more Scourge. They were only found in the urban area, according to the AG app. Well, she and the others signed up on Fixnet, too, though she wasn’t that active in it. It had nearly ten times more members than AG.

Perhaps it wasn’t so strange, but the one who used Fixnet the most was actually Gwendith. Not that she took gigs from there alone, but she and Heron teamed up and went on a couple. One had them stand guard over a warehouse door for half a day, then they got paid a couple thousand ACs for it. Another had them bring a package from one apartment on floor 216 in their tower, and they brought it all the way to Tower D6-L7-08. That one went quicker but gave them only a thousand ACs after expenses.

Saki, on the other hand, opted to utilise and train her sneakiness. Someone in Fixnet needed something that belonged to someone and was willing to pay someone else to get it for them. It wasn’t close to what that something was worth if bought outright though. Still, Saki took the job, snuck up into a corporation complex several towers away, and about a hundred floors above theirs, took the thing, and brought it to a drop site. The ACs were soon credited to her bank account.

Devotee didn’t do much except stay at home, or if Ryoko needed to go anywhere, he would follow behind to make sure she didn’t get into trouble. Yuriko’s handmaiden had already been kidnapped once, and she didn’t want it to happen again.

The downramp soon came up and Yuriko angled her bike to get on it. The highways, roads, and bridges were made from the same concrete mix that the buildings were made of, and Yuriko’s perception aura had some trouble penetrating through it compared to regular dirt and stone. It was tough, however, and once she witnessed a couple of vehicles crashing, though not by accident but because both of them were shooting at each other. Both of their tires blew up nearly at the same time, which caused the cars to swerve and rollover. Each one crashed against the outer barrier, but surprisingly, they didn’t collapse. Well, the vehicles collapsed against the concrete walls instead and probably caused the deaths of some of the passengers, but then again, they were gambling with their lives by gunfire.

She hadn’t been sure if she should help, mostly because when the occupants crawled out of the crash heaps, they shot at each other again until there was only a single man standing, who soon collapsed from blood loss. The crash had created a traffic jam, and not even the open gunfire discouraged the rubberneckers. Yuriko moved her bike to the side and headed over to check if any were still alive, but one of the other bikers stopped her. “Wait ‘til it's over before trying to loot.” The young man said sagely, “but the ‘Bringers might get here before we can do anything.”

 Soon afterwards, the Lawbringers did arrive.

They were armoured sentinels with huge metal wings that spanned five to six paces wide. Their bodies were at least two and a half paces tall, and her Anima perception could touch them. It couldn’t even come close as some kind of field pushed against it. The barrier’s effective reach was about a couple of paces from their armour and spread evenly along their wingspan, too. They had no visible weapons, but the crowd around her recoiled in palpable fear. The first to arrive panned his gaze across the crowd before turning his focus towards the ‘accident’, disregard quite evident in his posture. Yuriko felt more than a tinge of annoyance then. How dare the tin can think she wasn’t a threat? But she didn’t want to tangle with what was ostensibly the peacekeeping force of the city.

There were only two of them, and they scanned the dead bodies that were scattered across the road. The last man was still breathing, but the first Lawbringer did nothing to save him. He just watched, coldly, she assumed, since their faces were covered with a full helm, until the man expired. Then, they waited until some hover vehicles arrived.

Magnetic clamps on chains shot towards the wrecks and pulled them away from the road, after which a small squad of people in white armour jumped out of the hovering vehicle and started dragging the bodies out of the way. One of the flying vans lowered its altitude until it was a couple of paces above the road. The men started tossing the dead up towards the open door. Less than five minutes later, nothing but blood and stains were left of the fight. Yuriko and the rest of the bystanders continued on their way.

That had been yesterday, and after she got back home, she searched what the Lawbringers were and found little new to what was already told to her. Sighing, she zoomed down the ramp, opting not to slow, but to use the slope to speed up. She even put her bike’s transmission gear to neutral to save a bit of neo-petrol. She did have to use her Animakinesis to buffer herself and her ride when she slammed into the concrete barrier at the turn, ehehehe.

After the second turn, the ramp led back into a lower-level road, one that had another ramp that would eventually lead all the way down to Junktown. While she initially didn’t have a destination, she remembered her conversations with Tiger Lao about Matsumi’s disability.

She and her family had been abducted a couple of years ago. The girl had not been able to remember, but what eventually happened was that she had been rescued by Junktown’s bounty hunters and dropped off at an orphanage, without arms and without her calves and feet. The matron at the orphanage had tried her best to help Matsumi regain her spirit, but it wasn’t until Tiger Lao chanced upon her did things change. ‘Chronian gear was expensive only if it was the premium and combat versions. Civilian use gear was much cheaper, and Lao had donated a set for the girl. They grew closer, eventually, and she attended his martial arts class. She awakened right after performing the first katas and had been somewhat adopted by the older man.

He had not been able to find out what happened before then, and he didn’t really have any inclination to, but he and the others suspected that it had been the work of the extremists called the Dragon Blooded, who have been known to conduct terrorist activities. What was a little kidnapping to them?

Well, Yuriko didn’t really have anything better to do other than train and gather ACs. Oh, and search for how to climb or delve. She had a feeling that the secret was hidden somewhere within the walls of those incredibly tall mountains that surrounded the city in a near-perfect circle. And she wasn’t truly in a rush. She felt that she could use True Connection spell once again by the turn of the Season too, so she could get more news from home. She could treat this as a grand adventure, and it was someplace new, after all. A place that was quite exotic in its sensibilities and techniques.

Her Anima had grown practically by a pace a day over the last week alone! Truly, novelty was one of the keys to Anima growth. So she was following her instincts and her whims. Aside from the Lawbringers, nothing really gave her a sense of danger. The Scourge, if they were older and bigger, might be a challenge, but other than the difficulty of using Animus constructs against them, or Radiant energy, they also had a clear kinetic weakness.

“Well, everyone’s weak to kinetic energy,” Yuriko mumbled as she steered her bike down the next ramp.

As for the Dragon Blooded, she had a hunch that the name was connected to the city. Why call it Dragon Fall, hmm? Damien’s memories were occluded, or perhaps the shard she had didn’t include those events.

Should she search for the rest of him? Her careless foolishness in Karcellia allowed the shards containing his memories to escape…

No, it wasn’t a bad thing. A lucky thing, truly. If she had gotten all of those, she would be but a voice at the back of her head and calling herself Damien by now. Still, she felt a need to retrieve the rest of it, and the painful part was that she didn’t know if she could trust that instinct. She supposed Damien’s last words warned her of them. It couldn’t be anything but that, right? There was no world-ending threat sealed away in the depths of the Abyss that was on the verge of escape, right?

Foolish thoughts. Even if there was, she was in no position to defend the rest of the world. Advancing from Transformation to Manifestation wasn’t fast. Just accumulating enough Anima reach alone would take years. How much did she need anyway? A thousand paces? Maybe two? She was sure she wouldn’t stop trying to expand her reach as long as her Anima still grew. It was an obsession, wasn’t it? Heh. She also had to reach completion on her Colligia, and perhaps reach Colligia with her secondary Ennoia. And truly, she now wasn’t satisfied with that one’s narrow scope. Working to expand it would take years too, right?

But thankfully, the Ancient’s Way allowed her to eclipse those at the same technical level, and perhaps those above, too. If she expanded her Anima enough, if her Colligia and secondary Ennoia progressed at a suitable pace, and perhaps if she touched upon a tertiary Ennoia…then she should be able to contend two levels above, right?

Damien’s memories aside, he had always challenged those technically stronger than he and always won. How could she accomplish any less?

Well, the first step to solving the mystery of the Dragon Blooded was to find the bounty hunters who rescued Matsumi. To do that, she had to go to a place where they congregated. The one nearest to Tiger Lao’s place and the orphanage Matsumi lived at was a tavern called Kansaki.

Her bike landed on the ground level of the city and she meandered around the roads and alleys. Unlike the mega buildings, Junktown was not all filled with pedestrians or vehicles. Instead, there were chunks of dense population interspersed with the actual junk piles that she didn’t see during her first visit. The landmark that told her that she was near Kansaki area was a five-pace high mound of broken refrigerators with a flagpole above it. There wasn’t a banner though, just a few old bandages tied at the tip. She took the first left turn and soon enough, found the bar by its brightly lit neon sign, that was concealed from above and its surroundings because of the state of the buildings around it.

Here, the square was packed with pedestrians, and the sides were full of parked vehicles. There were stalls that sold odds and ends, as well as stalls that grilled meat. The scent of sizzling fat and spice made her tummy growl in anticipation, but she forgoed eating to go to the bar. She parked her Bladerunner next to a couple of bikes that looked to be old, but still well maintained.

Then she walked down the stairs to the entrance and pushed the doors open.